CRAIG BROWN

THE Met Office have issued yellow weather alerts, warning of potentially “atrocious” conditions on Friday as forecasters expect snow to sweep across Scotland.

While the rest of the UK is will be whipped by further gales and torrential rain, snow fall at low levels will hit Scotland.

Met Office forecaster Gordon McKinstry said: “We’ve issued a yellow alert this morning for some potentially very poor conditions coming in from the west on Friday. In Scotland it will be a very different beast from the rest of the country, It has the potential to fall at some very low levels - at this point is very difficult to say at what level and by what amounts but it certainly has the potential to cause travel disruption throughout the whole of Friday.”

Mr McKinstry said that the snow would affect almost the whole of Scotland with only the Moray Firth and Inverness area likely to escape the worst of it.

He said: “Anyone travelling south from there could find the conditions quite bad, and certainly the Central Belt could be quite bad.”

The snow is expected not to last the day, though, moving out into the North Sea before night. But it will be replaced by gales and heavy showers - falling as snow in the mountains - driven on by a deep low coming in from the Atlantic.